Maybe not, but notice that it also makes it easier for those investment bankers to find more possible investments, maybe evaluate them more accurately, and buy them with less overhead. These are replacing systems where you used to have to be physically present to bid.
I think the result should be a net gain to society, as is generally the case when you make markets more efficient.
I think the result should be a net gain to society, as is generally the case when you make markets more efficient.
Taking power away from the most powerful actors is often good a net gain for society. That doesn't make it a "easy win".
Matt Taibbi writing about the municipal bond market is worth reading:
...Along with virtually every major bank and finance company on Wall Street – not just GE, but J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, UBS, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Wachovia and more – these three Wall Street wiseguys spent the past decade tak
Recently I talked with a guy from Grant Street Group. They make, among other things, software with which local governments can auction their bonds on the Internet.
By making the auction process more transparent and easier to participate in, they enable local governments which need to sell bonds (to build a high school, for instance), to sell those bonds at, say, 7% interest instead of 8%. (At least, that's what he said.)
They have similar software for auctioning liens on property taxes, which also helps local governments raise more money by bringing more buyers to each auction, and probably helps the buyers reduce their risks by giving them more information.
This is a big deal. I think it's potentially more important than any budget argument that's been on the front pages since the 1960s. Yet I only heard of it by chance.
People would rather argue about reducing the budget by eliminating waste, or cutting subsidies to people who don't deserve it, or changing our ideological priorities. Nobody wants to talk about auction mechanics. But fixing the auction mechanics is the easy win. It's so easy that nobody's interested in it. It doesn't buy us fuzzies or let us signal our affiliations. To an individual activist, it's hardly worth doing.